404 CUBA AND POKTO RICO 



He little dreamed, when he wrote these words, only ten 

 years ago, that in so short a time those wooden frigates 

 would have disappeared from our navy, and that one of 

 the most effective, if not one of the largest, iron-clad 

 navies of the world, manned by these same Yankees, 

 would be in their place, hammering at the gates of Cuba, 

 preliminary to the establishment of American domination 

 in the Great Antilles, just as Rodney's guns a hundred 

 years ago determined English supremacy in the lesser 

 islands. 



The events taking place as the writing of this book closes 

 will release at least two of the Great Antilles from their 

 unnatural political and trade conditions, and we may count 

 Porto Rico and Cuba as saved from the chaos. If American 

 domination is established in Cuba and Porto Rico, there 

 can be little reason for longer refusing San Domingo's 

 plea for our protection. The people of that country were 

 the first to realize the hopelessness of their political in- 

 sularity and to seek a union with our country, which was 

 declined for reasons now no longer valid. 



The growing friendship between England and America 

 may also result in some consideration of the people of the 

 British West Indies, who before the Revolution were so 

 closely allied to us in blood and trade. Surely it is a 

 crime against nature and civilization that Jamaica, Bar- 

 bados, Dominica, Antigua, the Bahamas, and others of the 

 British- American islands should be allowed to die of dry- 

 rot because of tariff laws. 



The annexation of Hawaii broke down the great senti- 

 mental barrier concerning the protection of the few sugar- 

 planters of Louisiana which has hitherto stood between 

 us and the West Indies, and there is no doubt that our 

 tariff laws of the future will have some mercy upon our 

 West Indian neighbors. The West Indies and the Span- 

 ish-American republics once had in America a friend, a 

 statesman who, in the greatness of his vision, realized the 

 fact that the interest of our country lay in cultivating 



